FOX
The Emmy awards inspire more conflict, shock and outrage than possibly any other major awards show on the circuit. It makes sense; we spend so much time getting to know these characters and their struggles that we become incredibly invested in the show's success. But with so many channels, platforms, programs, stars and prestige dramas on the air right now, it’s going to be impossible to please everyone. Of course, that knowledge doesn’t stop us from waiting impatiently every year, hoping that our favorite performances from the past year will be recognized with an Emmy nomination. And every year, we end up with a new list of nominations that surprise and delight us, or send us into a spiral of rage, heartbreak and Twitter ranting. The 2014 nominations were no different, and these are the biggest shocks of the year.
The Good:
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy: Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine Despite its critical acclaim and Golden Globe wins, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is still something of an underdog in terms of ratings and public attention, so we weren’t expecting the Television Academy to take much notice of the Fox show. Which is why we were so delighted to read Braugher’s name on the list of nominees this morning for his work as the magnificently deadpan Captain Ray Holt. Brooklyn Nine-Nine might have only gotten one major nod, but it was for the single best part of the show, and for that we’re endlessly grateful. We know it might be hard to read, but we are... ecstatic.
Best Actress in a Drama: Lizzy Caplan, Masters of Sex Masters of Sex probably tops the list of brilliant shows that nobody pays enough attention to, but for all of its high points – the costumes, the dialogue, the chemistry between Masters and Johnson, the tense, quiet drama, the brilliant guest starts – much of the show’s excellence can be credited to Caplan’s performance as Virginia Johnson. It’s a complex, layered, funny, sexy, compelling role and it’s thrilling to see her work rightfully acknowledged as one of the best performances of the year.
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy: Allison Janney, Mom Mom is a complicated show. It’s ostensibly a typical Chuck Lorre comedy, with lots of inane jokes and strange plots, but it also devotes a great deal of time to the dramatic, difficult relationship between mother and daughter, both of whom are recovering addicts. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s usually thanks to Janney, who transforms what could have been a stereotypical over-the-top, obnoxious character into a flawed, layered, realistic human being.
Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy: Fred Armisen, Portlandia While it’s sad not to see Armisen’s co-star and co-writer Carrie Brownstein on the list of nominees as well, we’re excited to see the Television Academy finally pay attention to this weird, hilarious show and the weird, hilarious characters who inhabit it. Whether he’s learning the history of hip hop before a big concert or playing a feminist hippie who hates the customers in her shop, Armisen’s always original, funny, and just a little strange.
Best Comedy Series: Silicon Valley Another critical favorite that didn’t seem to get a lot of mainstream attention, Silicon Valley had an excellent first season, skewering the tech industry, the people who aspire to be part of it, and the people who make fun of it. Although airing on HBO automatically got the Emmys’ attention, it wasn’t the cultural phenomenon that some of its network-mates have become, and so it was good to see that a show doesn’t necessarily need A-list stars or famous directors in order to get attention.
Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy: Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live This season of SNL got bogged down by an influx of new cast members, the loss of its head writer halfway through the year, and controversy over the diversity of its cast. But there was one cast member who held things together, who was consistently hilarious and able to rescue just about any sketch just by being in it, and that cast member was Kate McKinnon. From Bieber to Ellen to “Dyke and Fats” to doing it on a twin bed, McKinnon was definitely this year’s MVP, and we’re happy to see the Emmys recognize that as well.
Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie: Kristen Wiig, The Spoils of Babylon To be honest, we never expected this weird, awkward and often hilarious miniseries to even be on the TV Academy’s radar, let alone the nominations list, but Wiig’s performance as Cynthia Morehouse, who endures poverty, war, an unhappy marriage, and a forbidden romance with her adopted brother in outrageous, strange and hilarious fashion was one of the funniest things on TV this year. Not quite on the same level as Lady Anne, but we imagine it would be a little awkward to nominate a mannequin for an Emmy.
Best Supporting Actress and Guest Actress(es) in a Comedy: Kate Mulgrew, Laverne Cox, Uzo Aduba, and Natasha Lyonne, Orange is the New Black Orange Is the New Black swept the nominations this year, and while we’re happy to see it get recognized for Best Comedy and Taylor Shilling’s lead performance as Piper Chapman, it’s the supporting cast who we’re really thrilled for. Between Mulgrew’s transformative work as Red being included in the Supporting Actress category and three of the finest, funniest and most heartbreaking actresses (Aduba, Lyonne, and Cox, who is the first transgender Emmy nominee) crowding everyone else out of the Guest Actress category, don’t be surprised if Orange takes home plenty of gold on Emmy night.
The Bad:
BBC America
Tatiana Maslany Gets Snubbed… Again Apparently, playing eight distinct characters, all of whom are equally complex, interesting, and fully-realized is not enough for the Emmy voters to take notice of Maslany’s incredible performance on Orphan Black, and both she and the show were snubbed for a second year. Since the tension between Helena and Sarah or the complicated relationship between Allison and Donnie or Cosima’s fight through her debilitating illness wasn’t enough, it seems the only way that Maslany will ever a nod is if she plays every single character on True Detective Season 2.
The Emmys Don’t Care About The Americans Despite turning out some of the most compelling, interesting, thrilling drama that has aired on television in the past year, The Americans was almost completely ignored by Emmy voters, earning one nomination for Margo Martindale’s guest spot. And though we pretty much expected the show not to make the Best Drama Series cut, we’re mostly shocked that Matthew Rhys’ incredible performance this season was also completely ignored by the Academy. Clearly the Emmys have a hard time looking past some bad wigs to see the brilliance underneath.
Really, Jeff Daniels Again? Don’t get us wrong, the once and future Harry Dunne does good work on The Newsroom, but it’s nothing special, especially compared to both what his fellow Best Actor in a Drama nominees turned out this year, and the performances of so many other actors who didn’t make the cut. But considering how much the Emmys seem to love him, we think Bryan Cranston and Matthew McConaughey might want to hold off on writing their acceptance speeches.
Ricky Gervais Gets Nominated For… Derek? We loved Gervais’ arrogant, deluded David Brent on The Office. We’re still laughing about his performance as the rude, frustrated and sometimes desperate Andy Millman on Extras, and we’d watch him bicker with Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington all day. However, we weren’t as crazy about his work on Derek, the saccharine, gentle-hearted sitcom where he plays the saccharine, gentle-hearted nursing home caretaker Derek, so we’re surprised to see just how vastly the Television Academy’s opinion about the show differed from ours. Still, at least we know we’re guaranteed a hell of a show if he actually wins.
Downton Abbey Keeps Racking Up the Nominations We get it: Maggie Smith is an international treasure. That doesn’t mean that the Emmys have to nominate her every single year, without fail. And just because Downton Abbey is a British period piece, that doesn’t mean it’s better than any number of excellent dramas who continue to be overlooked just because everyone on the show speaks with a British accent. It’s okay not to nominate them, Emmys. Everyone will still think you’re smart and worldly, we promise.
The Wrong People from Shameless Get Nominated, as Per Usual Here’s the good news: Shameless finally got more than one nomination! The bad news, though, is that they went to the actors with the most name recognition – William H. Macy, who is up for Best Actor in a Comedy and Joan Cusack, whose Guest Actress hot streak continues – rather than the ones who carried the show this year – Emmy Rossum, Jeremy Allen White and Noel Fisher, to name just a few. But, hey, it seems like that category switch actually paid off, even if it means nominating the actor whose character was in a coma over the ones who were struggling with jail time, balancing college and caring for his family and coming out and looking after his bipolar boyfriend.
Somehow, House of Cards Got 13 Nominations There are only two possible explanations: either the Emmy voters thought that, like Orange Is the New Black, they were voting based on the first season of the show, or they didn’t actually watch the new season of House of Cards, and they decided to throw a bunch of nominations its way to cover up that fact, since it’s an “important, prestige” drama.
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YouTube/The Young Turks
Spent: Looking for Change wants to have an uncomfortable conversation. The new documentary from director Derek Doneen and producer Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) shines a light on the "Underbanked", the 70 million Americans across the country who are not being served by traditional banking institutions, and must turn to check cashing services or pay day loans. Unfortunately, these services often have dire financial consequences. At a press conference for the film, Doneen, Tyler Perry (who narrates Spent), New School Professor Lisa Servon, and Dan Schulman of American Express discussed the challenges facing the "underbanked," the possible solutions to a financial system in grievous disrepair, and how education might the first step in the right direction.
Proper financial management is a skill so few of us have. Many of the issues depicted in the film stem from a lack of knowledge of the financial system.
Tyler Perry: "I think [financial hardships affect] the children of parents who are experiencing this, if they understood how the system works, and how when you’re outside of it it can be very difficult. Because no one taught me credit or check cashing or pay day loans, it was just the norm in the neighborhood. This is what you do. Growing up with us, you didn’t go to the bank, you went to the check cash. You went to the corner, you cash your check with Mr. Johnson down there, he took his money, he gave you yours. So [we need] to have an education to let people know that there is a cost, a very high cost, outside of the system."
Unfortunately, with the stigmas instituted by our capitalistic society, this ignorance often leads to shame.
Lisa Servon: "There’s a lot of shame around money. I talked a little with Alex, Melissa, and Debbie [the subjects of the documentary] before the show. We’re kind of made, societally, to feel like it’s our fault if we don’t have six months of savings, if we can’t make ends meet, if we somehow can’t pay the bills. So I think there’s a lot of inhibition about getting out there and saying that this is a real problem."
More Americans are being affected by the bank system than we realize.
Dan Schulman: "Forty-five percent of Americans who earn between $50,000 and $150,000 spend all or more of their monthly income every single month. So, there’s a huge opportunity here to redefine the system."
Lisa Servon: "I have actually started not liking the term 'unbanked' or 'underbanked' so much, because I think if you are part of the 99 percent, which I am, we’re all underbanked. The fact is, I can absorb a $35 overdraft fee, and people who are living right on the edge can’t. So this is why, I think, Alex and Melissa stopped using the bank. you saw those overdraft fees mounting up. It cost them more to use the bank than to use a check casher. So people are kind of saying, 'I can’t afford to go over.' At least when I go to the check casher, I get my check, I cash it, I look at what my bills are. I figure out who’s least likely to cut me off, so I’ll pay half of my Con Edison bill and three quarters of my phone bill and hopefully it will work out, but I’m not going to overdraft because this is all the money that I have."
Reform in the bank system might be closer than we realize, and one of the first steps is education.
Lisa Servon: "I think we may be at a moment of creative destruction with respect to financial services and that we are on the brink of seeing some really innovative solutions. There’s a tendency for us to just throw up our hands about banks and say, frankly, it’s just not in their business model to serve people they don’t make money on. And yet there is a history of policy and legislation, and one of the things that we can ask legislators who are sending out press releases to do is to hold banks’ feet to the fire."
"We all live in New York City. We’ve all seen the A, B, and C in restaurant windows – I think we should do that for banks and check cashers and credit unions. I don’t know if Chase or Citi Bank is better for me, but I want to know if they’re going to cost me more. Are they aligning with my values? If we could create a scorecard that would allow that to happen, I think banks would be a little more responsive."
Dan Schulman: "One of the things that we’re doing, if you go to Spentmovie.com, is that we’re going to a town in Mississippi called Clarksdale. It’s down on its luck. Fifty percent of the population is underserved. What we’re doing is working with two non-profits. We’re putting in free Wi-Fi into the whole town, and we’re going into the high schools to educate high school students in the economics classes about financial wellness and health. Then, what we’re hoping to have [is] an outside third party monitor, because it really makes a difference, all of this education and technology and people caring about this... I think it is a combination of having technology but also having the understanding of what it means to be financially well."
Spent: Looking For Change is available to stream on Spentmovie.com.
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Although the general public hasn't seen it, a trailer for the Fifty Shades of Grey movie recently screened to a bunch of fancy film people at Las Vegas Comic Con. And some of those fancy film folks were kind enough to take to Twitter and share their reactions. Unfortunately, many of those reactions tell us that the film looks like a really sweet, really adorable love story focused more on romance than the red room sexcapades many of us were hoping for. Seeing as how all of the other promo photos that have been released look insanely tame, we shouldn't be surprised. But if the trailer and promotional images are true reflections of what we can expect from the film, what might this say about American film and a desire to strongly regulate and censor images related to sexuality and sexual expression? This isn't just a question of filmmakers and producers "leaving out the good stuff" (although that is a huge issue here), it's one about whether or not Hollywood and America have a very big problem with female sexuality.
A few years back, similar discussions arose over the NC-17 rating given to Derek Cianfrance's brilliant film Blue Valentine. The stars of the complicated and intense love story spoke out against the MPAA (who later reversed their ruling and gave the film an R-rating), and what Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams had to say four years ago is still very much relevant today.
Gosling: You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario, which is both complicit and complex. It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film.
Williams: Mainstream films often depict sex and violence in a manner that is disturbing and very far from reality. Yet, the MPAA regularly awards these films with a more audience friendly rating, enabling our culture's desensitization to violence, rape, torture and brutality. Our film does not depict any of these attributes. It's simply a candid look at the difficulties couples face in sustaining their relationships over time. Blue Valentine opens a door for couples to have a dialogue about the everyday realities of many relationships. This film was made in the spirit of love, honesty and intimacy. I hope that the MPAA will hear our pleas and reconsider their decision.
Gosling and Williams both highlight an issue we've seen unfolding over the years in cinema and media. As an American culture, we find far more controversy and danger in images concerned with sexual experiences than in images depicting violent acts. You could argue that we are more afraid of exposing young people to sex and sexuality than we are of exposing them to murder and death. But the fact that the MPAA took issue with a scene where a woman was on the receiving end of oral sex also suggests that Hollywood has a specific aversion to female sexuality.
While many readers found Fifty Shades of Grey to be an anti-feminist text, others have argued that because the focus is ultimately on Anastasia and her own sexual discovery, this is a story about a woman and her desires and pleasures. As such, it is a feminist narrative at its core. Ana experiences her own sexual revolution (among other things) throughout the course of the trilogy, and to quell that sex-based revolution and turn it into a mere romance where girl-meets-boy would really be a tragedy. It'd be like turning The Hunger Games into a story about a young girl who has a really tough time deciding between two loves. It's not totally out of left field, but it removes the most powerful aspect of the story; the girl is Katniss and Katniss is a warrior. Let's hope Ana's ever-important inner goddess (a "character" in the book who may have sounded totally ridiculous at times, but functioned as the one, true, unrepressed portion of Ana's psyche) does not get left out.
Sure, Fifty Shades of Grey is, at the end of it all, a love story. Then again, so was Blue Valentine, and more recently Blue Is the Warmest Color. But the latter is a powerful love story because of its stark depictions of desire and female-centered erotic experiences. Fifty Shades could have been a bold, excellent movie (regardless of the literary value of the original text) that highlighted a young woman's introduction into sex and so-called sexual deviance — and it still could be! But right now it sounds like it's shaping up to be one of a million romantic dramas. Entertaining enough, but ultimately forgettable, and in no small way problematic. Here's hoping director Sam Taylor-Johnson proves us wrong, avoids some of the clichés, and brings us something a bit more interesting.
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DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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British TV psychic Derek Acorah has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from a car crash last month (Dec13). The 63-year-old Most Haunted star was arrested on 7 December (13) after his sports car was involved in a collision near his home in Liverpool, England.
Acorah was not hurt in the crash, but the driver and passenger travelling in the other vehicle were both hospitalised.
He appeared in court on Monday (13Jan14) under his real name, Derek Johnson, and entered a not guilty plea to charges of failing to provide a breath test and driving without due care and attention.
Acorah will stand trial in June (14).

Summit via Everett Collection
You can imagine that Renny Harlin, director and one quadrant of the writing team for The Legend of Hercules, began his pitch as such: We'll start with a war, because lots of these things start with wars. It feels like this was the principal maxim behind a good deal of the creative choices in this latest update of the Ancient Greek myth. There are always horse riding scenes. There are generally arena battles. There are CGI lions, when you can afford 'em. Oh, and you've got to have a romantic couple canoodling at the base of a waterfall. Weaving them all together cohesively would be a waste of time — just let the common threads take form in a remarkably shouldered Kellan Lutz and action sequences that transubstantiate abjectly to and fro slow-motion.
But pervading through Lutz's shirtless smirks and accent continuity that calls envy from Johnny Depp's Alice in Wonderland performance is the obtrusive lack of thought that went into this picture. A proverbial grab bag of "the basics" of the classic epic genre, The Legend of Hercules boasts familiarity over originality. So much so that the filmmakers didn't stop at Hercules mythology... they barely started with it, in fact. There's more Jesus Christ in the character than there is the Ancient Greek demigod, with no lack of Gladiator to keep things moreover relevant. But even more outrageous than the void of imagination in the construct of Hercules' world is its script — a piece so comically dim, thin, and idiotic that you will laugh. So we can't exactly say this is a totally joyless time at the movies.
Summit via Everett Collection
Surrounding Hercules, a character whose arc takes him from being a nice enough strong dude to a nice enough strong dude who kills people and finally owns up to his fate — "Okay, fine, yes, I guess I'm a god" — are a legion of characters whose makeup and motivations are instituted in their opening scenes and never change thereafter. His de facto stepdad, the teeth-baring King Amphitryon (Scott Adkins), despises the boy for being a living tribute to his supernatural cuckolding; his half-brother Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) is the archetypical scheming, neutered, jealous brother figure right down to the facial scar. The dialogue this family of mongoloids tosses around is stunningly brainless, ditto their character beats. Hercules can't understand how a mystical stranger knows his identity, even though he just moments ago exited a packed coliseum chanting his name. Iphicles defies villainy and menace when he threatens his betrothed Hebe (Gaia Weiss), long in love with Hercules, with the terrible fate of "accepting [him] and loving [their] children equally!" And the dad... jeez, that guy must really be proud of his teeth.
With no artistic feat successfully accomplished (or even braved, really) by this movie, we can at the very least call it inoffensive. There is nothing in The Legend of Hercules with which to take issue beyond its dismal intellect, and in a genre especially prone to regressive activity, this is a noteworthy triumph. But you might not have enough energy by the end to award The Legend of Hercules with this superlative. Either because you'll have laughed yourself into a coma at the film's idiocy, or because you'll have lost all strength trying to fend it off.
1/5
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Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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You know her as Crazy Eyes on Orange Is the New Black, but just like we were shocked to find out that she has very white, normal parents on the show, our minds were blown by how feminine and stylish she is in real life. Here is actress Uzo Aduba workin' that yellow dress, and her hair and makeup are equally stunning. She's almost unrecognizeable from the show, where she wears that drab, tan prison uniform with her hair in multiple mini twists. Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren is one of our favorite characters because she is a complex juxtaposition of sensitive, poetic romantic (she loves quoting Shakespeare) and intense, unpredictable madwoman (she pees in Piper's bunk when Piper rejects her). In short, Crazy Eyes is as original as they come.
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From Our Partners:40 Most Revealing See-Through Red Carpet Looks (Vh1)15 Stars Share Secrets of their Sex Lives (Celebuzz)

ABC has tried to keep a tight lip about who will be competing on Season 16 of Dancing with the Stars. And because of this, everyone grows eager to learn who will be taking the stage each upcoming season. But on Tuesday morning, the network calmed our anxieties by announcing who made the cast for the new season of DWTS.
From a housewife to a football player to a gymnast, Season 16 is made up of a wide variety of characters. See who made the cut below!
RELATED: DWTS Could Cast Lisa Vanderpump
Meet the DWTS Season 16 Cast and Their Partners:
1. Wynona Judd and Tony Dovolani
2. D.L. Hughley and Cheryl Burke
3. Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff
4. Lisa Vanderpump and Gleb Savchenko
5. Andy Dick and Sharna Burgess
6. Victor Ortiz and Lindsay Arnold
7. Zendaya Coleman and Val Chmerkovskiy
8. Aly Raisman and Mark Ballas
9. Ingo Rademacher and Kym Johnson
10. Kellie Pickler and Derek Hough
11. Dorothy Hamill and Tristan MacManus
Follow Lindsey on Twitter @LDiMat.
[Photo Credit: Rick Rowell/ABC]
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With only a few hours to go before the big reveal on Dancing With the Stars: All Stars, we looked to pro-dancer and All Star competitor Louis Van Amstel for a little perspective. Who might be taking home that mirror ball? And did Shawn Johnson’s big risk put her jeopardy?
“It was very, very risky to do what they did,” he says.
When it came time for Johnson and her partner, Derek Hough, to revisit their favorite dance from earlier in the season, the duo picked their controversial quick step – a dance that garnered criticism from the judges for its breach of DWTS law. Hough and Johnson decided to break the rule – which states that both dancers must be touching through the routine – once more, but when the music stopped, the audience certainly didn’t seem to mind. The thunderous applause could have crumbled walls in a feebler theater.
“Earlier in the season, they took risks but they were up against celebrities who didn’t have the fan bases. Now, they’re up against two celebrities who’ve never been in the bottom two, or the bottom three, and they had higher scores,” says Van Amstel.
And while Van Amstel says he doesn’t think the risk will ruin their chances, he doesn’t think the duo needed to live so dangerously. “It was a reflection of quickstep. It was an entertaining dance, but it broke the rule … They had so many great dances … I would have chosen one of those because, you know what, they don’t have to prove any more that they can dance or that they can be rebellious,” he says.
Johnson is clearly a talented dancer, and her gymnast background gives her an athletic edge that allows her to try stunts the other dancers probably wouldn’t brave. Hough is widely regarded as one of the top choreographers on the show, and this quick step was by no means his only shining moment. “They could have done something else, followed the rules, and still had the audience on their feet,” says Van Amstel.
Still, as a Season 15 contestant, Van Amstel is rooting for all of his cast mates. “All three guys, all three girls … [we] bonded equally,” he says. “Purely, from [the perspective] of what Dancing with the Stars is about – a non-dancer learning to dance – it’s Kelly. But if you look at Dancing With the Stars as a dance competition, Melissa should win. And if you look at the consistency of bringing your A-game every single week, I would have to give it to Shawn,” says Van Amstel.
Of course, that doesn’t give fans solace in one direction or the other. Is there such a thing as a front-runner at this point in the All Star season? Nope. “Any of three of those girls could win,” says Van Amstel.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to sweat it out until the end of tonight’s Season 15 finale. If only we could muster a little patience.
Follow Kelsea on Twitter @KelseaStahler
[Photo Credit: ABC]
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